Tag Archives: grey gardens

TOPICS: Using YouTube Quick Capture for the first time; Grey Gardens Premier; Twin Oaks Retreat; and a very poignant 2 Year Anniversary week

GREY GARDENS PREMIER party! If you skip around the video below, you can find some fun spots where we quote Big and Little Edie, and do our best to mimic their charming and disturbing ways. In my previous post, I pieced together most of the original documentary, so check that out, if you haven’t seen the original documentary!

I hope I don’t offend Sara or anyone involved with the original documentary, and certainly hope I am not in violation of any copyrights, but for those of you who cannot get to the documentary GREY GARDENS, you can watch it in pieces below.

NOTE: as you watch the playlist, it might “time out” and show a “this video is no longer available.” Just refresh the page and find your way back to where you left off by using the on-screen video menu.

Keep in mind that this does NOT do justice to watching it as a complete film, so please… PLEASE look for it.

The beginning bits are missing, but most of it is here; enough to give you some background so you can then enjoy the depth of the HBO film coming up this weekend! Set your DVR’s and Tivo’s for HBO, Saturday April 18th. Check local listing for time.

The playlist below includes a very special interview and a return to the Grey Gardens home. Just click play, sit back and relax, and the playlist will move forward for you… Get ready for an amazing documentary that will stick with you for the rest of your life and grow within you like the vines on the side of the Grey Garden mansion.

I think Drew Barrymore may very well be able to pull this off, which is most everyone’s concern over her role as “Little Edie.” But this just looks great. Subtle, no caricaturization, maybe even too downplayed, but this was going to be an impossible role for anyone and I say “kudos” to Drew for having the guts.

Today I was contacted by Sara Maysles, daughter of Albert Maysles, one of the brothers who created the original documentary, through Twitter because of thelast Grey Gardens entry, and I have to say, I am not just elated that she took the time to connect, but also that we have the technology and apps like Twitter to do so!

I am happy and honored to be a part of any promotions related to this wonderful story of these extraordinary people. Speaking of which, how glorious is THIS!

Grey Gardens

Free News Projects is proud to announce the upcoming release of Grey Gardens.
One of the strangest and subtlest films ever made, the Maysles Brothers’ 1975 documentary Grey Gardens today boasts as devoted a following as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Harold and Maude. Shot at Grey Gardens, the dilapidated East Hamptons mansion of “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Beale, aunt and cousin to Jackie Onassis, this classic of cinema vérité tracks the Beales’ eccentric and sequestered lives—which consist mostly of doing nothing, but with a mesmerizing zest and volubility. Little Edie’s magical aphorisms (“Raccoons and cats become a little bit boring,” she sighs towards the end of the film, “I mean for too long a time…”) are gems of unwitting camp, and between her observations, her costumes, the incredibly bizarre mother-daughter tensions, the cats, raccoons and the beautiful ruins of Grey Gardens itself, “doing nothing” amounts to everything; indeed, it amounts to a tragicomedy of enormous emotional punch.

This eclectic volume offers a myriad of collaged illustrations, photographs, film stills, production notes and other archival materials alongside transcripts of the Beale’s own stories and conversations edited from unreleased Grey Gardens sound recordings. Structured to mirror the Maysles’ own approach to the world of the Beales, it closely resembles the enchanting clutter of the mansion, a self-contained world littered with mementos and telling ephemera. It also reproduces unpublished photographs by Albert Maysles and David Maysles. With an introduction by Albert Maysles, drawings and illustrations by Albert’s daughter, Rebekah Maysles, and an appendix with the full transcript of Grey Gardens, as well as an audio cd of sound recordings capturing the Beales at their best, this book is the essential companion to the film and a beautiful testimony to its legacy.

The sixty minute CD also included with the book will contain conversations with the Beales and their friends, songs and poetry recited by the two Edie Beales, as well as audio of the Beales during and after watching the film Grey Gardens for the first time.

I’ve been on a most delightful, bizarre, and poignant Grey Gardens kick over the past couple of weeks. Grey Gardens is a beautiful and disturbing documentary from the mid-70s about “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Beale of East Hampton, Aunt and Cousin to Jacqueline Onassis-Kennedy respectively. Always lacking in conformity to the demands of aristocracy, they became outcasts and eventually recluses, holing up in their dilapidating 28 room mansion, alone and in complete squalor. East Hampton officials demanded that the house be cleaned up to standards or they would be arrested, which the media descended upon since these two were related to the Kennedy/Onassis clan. The brothers Maysle befriended the Edies and documented their lives after the “raid” from the city, capturing one of the most unusual and surprisingly haunting relationships I’ve ever seen. While it would be easy to dismiss the Edies as crazy and/or just plain sad, they were entirely present and coherent, with some gems of life observations.

I finally watched the documentary a couple of weeks ago, then watched it again with Johnny and then again with Jip. I brought it with me to Chicago and watched it yet again with Ann. It’s a cult classic for a reason because the feelings and thoughts and images that come from this film stay with you for days and weeks. From this classic sprang Grey Gardens, The Musical on Broadway, a sequel to Grey Gardens called The Beales of Grey Gardens created from original footage, which fleshes out the Beales even further with some of the most comical and poignant scenes I’ve ever enjoyed, and now a feature film starring Drew Barrymore as Little Edie and Jessica Lange as Big Edie is set to hit HBO this year.

Something about these two women and the choices of their lives are both inspiring and upsetting because they represent a part of all of us who so desperately wish to be an important and meaningful part of this world, but sometimes we all feel the creeping up of the comfort that could be found in the complete resignation and retreat from the very things we crave.